Auto-alias Your Repos

#linux #productivity #tips

If you have all your code repos under a common directory, you can make it so changing your working directory to any of the repos is just entering the name of the repo.

For example, all my code repos are under ~/code:

~ > ls ~/code
bar    foo

By adding a loop for the sub-directories of the common parent inside your shell config, ~/.zshrc in my case, you can automatically create a alias for each of the repo directories:

for repo in $(ls ~/code)
do
  alias $repo="cd ~/code/$repo"
done

Then you need to reload your config:

~ > . ~/.zshrc

Now, if you're in one repo, lets say foo:

~/code/foo/app/models >

You can easily swap over to bar:

~/code/foo/app/models > bar
~/code/bar >

Top comments (9)

Piotr Szadkowski • Jan 28 '20

Hey nc idea, expanded it a little so you can provide more locations

locations=(react sites ios android)

for location in "${locations[@]}"
do
    for repo in $(ls ~/$location)
    do
        alias $repo="cd ~/$location/$repo"
    done
done

Kyle Nickel • Jan 28 '20

A comment on a different site has given, for zsh, what I believe is the best solution for this:

Set cdpath=($HOME/code) in .zshrc. With auto_cd this allows for the same functionality without creating a bunch of aliases.

Klaus Alexander Seistrup • Jan 29 '20

What's the thing with “$(ls ~/code)”? Why spawn a subshell, rather than just saying “for repo in ~/code/*”?

Stefan Bauckmeier • Jan 28 '20

now you just have to be cautious to not check out any project having a name like a command on your machine. (like git clone https://server/myproject.git ~/code/ls)

Kyle Nickel • Jan 28 '20

Yeah, that's clearly a risk, but most likely a outlier.

You could always add constraint in the loop to skip the iteration if the command already exists, as well.

James McNulty • Jan 28 '20

Try autojump ;)

Kyle Nickel • Jan 28 '20 • Edited

What seems to be a good solution is using cdpath in combination with auto_cd in zsh, should produce the same results without the aliasing.

Peter Luladjiev • Jan 29 '20

ZSH's plugin Z does almost the same job. It requires you to use the command z in front of the folder name but it does not pollute your shell with aliases e.g. z foo OR z bar